


Alone

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 09:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19270693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Is anyone really listening?





	Alone

 In the aftermath, Michael wanted a meeting, the four of them together, but Gabriel shook his head, and walked away.

“Gabriel?” Sandalphon asked. “Where are you going?”

“Down.”

“You want me to…?”

“No, thanks, champ. You stay in the office, keep the home fort.” The cheer in his voice was hard to inject, and even to his own ears, his tone sounded wooden, forced. He felt weird. Uncomfortable. His stomach was roiling like an ocean, and his skin felt too tight, stiff. There was an unpleasant sensation in the base of his throat, and when he was down on Earth, it only got worse, although he tried to swallow it until he was out on the beach.

He didn’t know where the beach was. Just that it was a beach, that the water was kinda warm, the sand yellowish, although the sky was grey and overcast. The sensation in the base of his throat, hot and tight and thick, intensified, and he felt his throat spasm: he gagged, and he leaned forward instinctively, bracing his palms against his knees.

He gagged again: it tasted foul.

Nothing came up, not even bile – he’d never eaten anything before. He’d never felt the need to kick the digestive system into action.

Aziraphale didn’t die, though. He didn’t die. He didn’t burn. And it was heresy to think it, to feel good about it, to be _glad_ , but he didn’t die. He didn’t! And Gabriel was _glad_. He felt something almost like relief, underneath the awe and the fear, because Aziraphale wasn’t dead, but… What was he? He didn’t know. He didn’t know. Something else, now, something not entirely angel, because otherwise, how could he…?

But Aziraphale wasn’t dead.

And he was—

But he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be glad, that Aziraphale wasn’t dead. That was wrong of him, to be glad. That was Not Good, and he was meant to be Good personified. It wasn’t meant to feel _complicated_ , or _conflicted_ , it was simply meant to Be.

Gabriel stripped off his clothes, folding them into a neat little square on a conjured chair, so that he was only in his bathing suit, and he padded out over the sand. He looked out over the wet sandflats, at all the little crustaceans in the little pools, and their shells…

There wouldn’t be crustaceans, he didn’t think, after Heaven won the War.

They weren’t Good enough.

Kneeling down, he very gently picked up the spiral white shell of a hermit crab, feeling it shift as he picked it up, and he placed it on his palm, holding very still. It didn’t take very long, but he was aware of the quiet wash of the water against the shore, the wetness of the sand as it stuck against his knees, and the _smell_ s, the smell of salt, and wind…

The hermit crab twitched.

He felt the ticklish sensation of its little legs as they came out, over his palm, and then he watched, feeling himself smile, as its body poked out of its shell. It was _so_ red, and he could see its black, beady little eyes on their stalks, watched all its legs move at once as it crawled over his skin…

He put it back.

Gabriel knew people ate them, crabs. He didn’t understand that. People would eat _anything_ , and that was bad enough, but eating something like this, when it was so small, and _cute_ , and when they’d all be burned away, at the end of it all…

The sickly feeling came back.

He watched the crab toddle through the sand, incognizant of the Earth around it, where the Apocalypse had came and went.

He looked up at the cloudy sky.

“He never,” he started, and felt stupid. It wasn’t that She wasn’t omniscient, because She was. It wasn’t that She wouldn’t hear, if he talked, because he knew She would. It was just that, sometimes, and he knew it was wrong to think so, and that it was a Bad thing to think, sometimes, it felt like maybe She wasn’t listening. Gabriel swallowed thickness that was gathering in his corporeal throat, for reasons he did not know. “He never wanted to be one of us, did he?”

There was no answer. Not even a pickup in the light, summer breeze, or in the movements of the ocean swells.

Gabriel walked further out, and walked until he was a little more than waist deep in cool water, so that he could dive, and swim. He liked to swim. He liked the feeling it put in his muscles, just like jogging did; he liked the pressure of the water on every side, liked the way his hair felt when he was underwater, like it was barely attached to him, like _he_ was barely attached to anything.

Not that he wanted that.

He wanted to be attached to everything, to Heaven, to _everyone_ …

But Aziraphale didn’t.

He didn’t want Gabriel, or the other angels, or Heaven – he wanted a _demon_ … Why? _Why_?

The saltwater stung his eyes. There was an ache in his chest. Was it meant to _hurt_? He wasn’t meant to hurt. He was a fucking _angel_.

He wished he’d brought Sandalphon with him. He felt… alone. So alone.  

Is this how Aziraphale _wanted_ to be?

Alone?

Pushing to the surface, he lay on his back in the water, looking up at the grey, grey sky.

“Is that what he wants?” he asked, powerlessly, as if to an empty universe. “He hated us all that much, and wanted to be alone?”

No answer.

Gabriel swam until his muscles ached, and he couldn’t think anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open. Check out [Fuck Yeah, Gabriel! too](https://fuckyeahgabrielgoodomens.tumblr.com/),
> 
> Remember that [the Tadfield Advertiser](https://tadfield-advertiser.dreamwidth.org/517.html) and the [Good Omens Prompt Meme](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/9084.html) are both up and running, and people should definitely go leave prompts and fills on both!!


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